1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to thermoelectric generators including thermoelectric transducer modules for generating electricity using biologically generated heat such as human body heat. The present invention also relates to artificial inner ears using thermoelectric generators.
This application claims priority on Japanese Patent Application No. 2005-22347, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, various types of thermoelectric transducer modules performing thermoelectric conversion based on the Peltier effect and Seebeck effect have been developed and used for heating/cooling devices and generators, for example. A typical type of thermoelectric transducer module is designed in such a way that numerous thermoelectric elements are fixed and arranged between a pair of insulating substrates, wherein numerous electrodes are formed at prescribed positions of the oppositely arranged surfaces of the paired insulating substrates, and upper and lower ends of thermoelectric elements respectively join the electrodes oppositely arranged each other by way of solder. Japanese Patent Application Publication No. H10-111368 discloses an example of a thermoelectric wristwatch using a thermoelectric transducer module.
In the aforementioned thermoelectric wristwatch, a thermoelectric transducer module is attached to the interior surface of a rear cover by way of a plate spring, and a heat-dissipation ring connected to a booster circuit is attached to the surface opposite to the surface directly brought into contact with the plate spring in association with the thermoelectric transducer module. When a user uses a thermoelectric wristwatch attached on his/her wrist in such a way that the rear cover is directly brought into contact with the skin surface, the user's body heat (i.e., body heat) is transmitted to the thermoelectric transducer module via the rear cover and the plate spring, so that the thermoelectric transducer module converts the user's body heat into electricity. Hence, the thermoelectric wristwatch operates by use of the electricity generated by the thermoelectric transducer module.
The aforementioned thermoelectric wristwatch has a drawback in that the heat transmission efficiency thereof is deteriorated because of the intervention of the relatively thick rear cover and plate spring that are arranged between the user's skin surface and the thermoelectric transducer module. In addition, the heat-dissipation ring is arranged outside of the casing of the thermoelectric wristwatch, so that the heat exchange efficiency thereof is deteriorated due to the external temperature, which makes it difficult to produce a relatively large temperature difference between the terminal ends of thermoelectric elements included in the thermoelectric transducer module. This causes difficulty in increasing the amount of electricity generated by the thermoelectric transducer module. Furthermore, the rear cover of the thermoelectric wristwatch is not flexible and therefore cannot be deformed in shape to suit the user's skin surface. That is, it is very difficult to adequately bring the rear cover into close contact with the user's skin surface. This also causes difficulty in increasing the amount of electricity generated by the thermoelectric transducer module.
Moreover, there is a high demand to develop artificial small-size inner ears that can adequately operate based on electricity generated using biologically generated heat such as human body heat.